The Price of Innocence

by Michael Russell

  Many of the fingerprint experts had worked at the SCRO for a long time and were on familiar terms with detectives throughout the Strathclyde Police area. The techniques they used had been aided in recent years by computer technology, but fingerprint identification continued to be a task that depended on individual skill, developed through rigorous scientific training and honed by constant experience.

  On Tuesday 21 January, nearly two weeks after the murder, Detective Inspector Alexander McAllister, Stephen Heath’s deputy, received news of the breakthrough the team had been waiting for. A significant fingerprint had at last been identified.

  Fingerprint evidence remains the gold standard of forensic evidence and in 1997 even a single fingerprint on its own was still enough to secure a conviction. At that time fingerprint evidence had never been successfully challenged in the Scottish courts. Accordingly, if a fingerprint was found at the scene of a crime, its owner always needed to have a very good reason for being there.

  This fingerprint was particularly important, for it had been found on a gift tag attached to a Christmas parcel in the house. The implication was that, it being early January, the parcel would only have been there for a matter of weeks, so anyone who touched it must have been in the house recently. The print found on the tag was identified as that of David Asbury, who had worked on Miss Ross’s extension some years previously. Now Asbury was a clear suspect and the suicide note he left just after the murder, as well as the money found in his house, took on a new significance.

  The identification of a fingerprint changes everything in any serious inquiry. Previous suspects are forgotten and the pace changes as preparation is made for concluding the investigation. A conviction is seen as virtually assured. So it was on this inquiry. Early on the morning of Wednesday 22 January 1997, an arrest squad of uniformed and detective officers were briefed in Kilmarnock police office before heading to David Asbury’s home in Kilbirnie.

  Barely awake, David Asbury’s protestations of innocence and the desperate objections of his mother were brushed aside. He was arrested, taken to Kilmarnock Police headquarters and interviewed about the murder of Marion Ross. Although the full details of what happened there have never been revealed, it is known that from the outset he vehemently denied involvement. It is likely that early on the fingerprint evidence was revealed to him and his lawyer to convince him of the futility of denial.

  Asbury has since hinted as much and it is suspected that his later explanation, that he had called in at Marion Ross’s house on the Monday before her murder because he had run out of petrol, was borne out of his desperation to refute this supposedly infallible proof of his guilt.

  Once Asbury had been taken away, a detailed search of his house began. Items of clothing and personal belongings were removed for further tests. Among them was the biscuit tin found by Shirley in her earlier visit, which still contained money wrapped in rubber bands.

  All other possible suspects were now forgotten and evidence was carefully reassessed to ensure its pertinence to the new case. Relatives, friends and acquaintances were re-interviewed prior to a final report being presented to the procurator fiscal.

  In reality, the new case was very thin. Only the single print on the Christmas parcel linked him to the crime scene. Miss Ross lived alone and, as the police now knew, tended to hold on to things. Her house was untidy and relics from the past were scattered everywhere. It was possible that the print had been left in the house when the accused had worked with his grandfather’s firm building an extension. It was equally possible that his alibi about calling in at the house might be true.

  In any case, David Asbury did not fit the profile of a brutal and sadistic killer. He was not known as a violent man and had no previous convictions involving violence. There was no record of previous drink- or drug-related behaviour. No further forensic evidence linking him to the crime had been uncovered and whilst there was some circumstantial evidence that he had been in the area on the previous Monday, he had already admitted that fact. There were of course no eyewitnesses to the crime.

  It is likely that, at their frequent briefings, Detective Chief Inspector Heath and the local procurator fiscal were well aware of these problems. Whilst Heath felt he had found the murderer, he knew that the evidence was far from watertight. More evidence was needed, and the obvious place to look for it was in the biscuit tin. If it could be proved that the money belonged to Marion Ross, then the case against Asbury would be far stronger. In fact, it would be almost irrefutable.

  The result of the SCRO examination of the tin was sensational. The experts had identified Marion Ross’s fingerprint on its outside surface.

  There could now be no question of doubt. Asbury’s print had been found in Marion Ross’s home. Her print was on a tin full of money found in Asbury’s bedroom. Consequently Asbury must stand trial for murder and, as far as the police were concerned, it was certain that he would be found guilty. After all, fingerprints don’t lie.

  Even at this early stage, however, nothing in the case was as it seemed. Some years later it was revealed that the print on the tin had been wrongly attributed to Marion Ross. Analysis of police documents showed that the tin had taken nine days to reach the SCRO from the police in Kilmarnock – an almost unheard-of delay for a vital piece of evidence. In addition, information would come forward which indicated that the money in the tin did in fact belong to David Asbury.

  2

  ‘One of your prints’

  Day 34

  As the murder inquiry wound down, the standard process of elimination, undertaken at almost every crime scene, was carried out to ensure that fingerprints found in the house or at any other important site were matched to people who were known to have had legitimate reasons for being in such places before or after Marion Ross’s death. This included eliminating the fingerprints of police officers who had been involved in the inquiry.

  All new police recruits have their fingerprints recorded and kept on file. The administration of such an archive is complex and prints go missing from time to time. Shirley’s prints had been mislaid from the archive, so for the elimination process in the Marion Ross case she was asked to supply new ones, which she did whilst on duty on Sunday 9 February. By that time she had long since left the Marion Ross team and had been allocated to other criminal investigations.

  Two days later, she was working with Willie Shields when she was approached by one of the leading officers in the Marion Ross inquiry, Detective Inspector Alexander McAllister. In a very matter-of-fact way he said, ‘One of your prints has been identified by the SCRO.’

  ‘That would be on the tin I found in Asbury’s house,’ responded Shirley.

  ‘No,’ replied DI McAllister. ‘It was on the bathroom door surround in the Ross house.’

  Shirley was more surprised than alarmed at this news. She simply told DI McAllister that there must have been a mistake, as she had never been in the house. So he went off to phone the SCRO to check. He returned shortly afterwards and this time he was a little more insistent. The SCRO experts were quite clear – the print found was definitely hers.

  Shirley knew that this was a serious allegation because she had not been authorised to enter the house. However, at this stage she was more anxious than fearful, because it was obviously a mistake. Her fingerprint just could not have been where they said it was.

  She was owed a couple of days off, and during that time she confided in her father Iain who had retired as a superintendent from Strathclyde Police in 1992. He too was concerned. He knew his daughter always spoke the truth but that fingerprint evidence was irrefutable had always been an article of faith for himself as a police officer, as it was for every officer and, indeed, the public. He also knew that detectives didn’t take kindly to any of their staff ‘complicating’ things.

  The conversation brought back memories of when Shirley had first told him she wanted to join the police. Whilst he had been pleased, he had also been worried for her. He felt tha
t the force was still at times a fiercely misogynistic organisation and he also knew that young officers, both male and female, could be let down by senior officers and politicians whose ambition took precedence over delivering the support or resources that ordinary police officers needed.

  He had recognised in Shirley a steely determination and a passion for fighting injustice, but he was not sure that this was enough to guarantee success in the constabulary. Her devotion to the truth and to speaking the truth was so strong that he feared it might conflict with what the police force sometimes demanded from its officers.

  Yet as the years had passed it seemed as if she was, after all, in the right job. She studied hard, passed all her promotion exams and gained the Higher National Certificate in policing. Her brother was also in the force and when she married David Cardwell, a fellow police officer, her life seemed settled. She was made a detective constable, which is usually a reward for impeccable service, and a promising career had seemed to stretch before her.

  When she returned to work after her days off, she was immediately summoned by DCI Heath. ‘Your print’s been found and you’d better sort it out,’ he said, leaving it in her hands and explicitly ruling out any question of a mistake having been made by the experts. Clearly he expected her to admit she had been in the house. The consequences of this would have been a reprimand and perhaps a black mark on her record, but no more than that.

  Shirley’s police partner, Willie Shields, was quite clear that he had been with Shirley whenever she had visited the murder house and had never seen her enter. But Heath remained adamant. He was sure she had entered the property. Both of them were ordered to submit statements about all their actions during the inquiry and later in the day Heath piled on the pressure by taking Shirley and Willie to the murder scene. They were accompanied by DI McAllister.

  The atmosphere in the darkened house was eerie. There was a large stain on the carpet by the bathroom door, where the body had been found. Heath marched up to it and pointed to a black mark halfway up the door surround.

  ‘That is your print,’ he said accusingly.

  ‘It can’t be,’ she said. ‘I’ve never been in this house before now.’

  Heath was used to getting his own way and with each denial his anger visibly increased. To Shirley, he seemed to be behaving in a way that was out of proportion to the problem, but to Heath the dangers of having a fingerprint disputed when the whole case was dependent on such evidence must have been only too real.

  Shirley was in a state of some distress and as soon as she could she phoned Iain. He reassured her that matters would soon be resolved. But he was worried. If this really was Shirley’s print, then what was going on? Could it be that she had been in the house? And if so, why was she so determined to deny it and put herself through such obvious suffering?

  Shirley’s mother, Nancy, from whom Iain had been separated for some years, was also deeply concerned. She knew that Shirley did not lie and yet she found the situation inexplicable. She had been married to a policeman for long enough to believe that there could be no denying fingerprint evidence.

  More pressure followed. She was interviewed by someone further up the chain of command. Yet despite her strong and continuing protestations that the fingerprint could not be hers, the deputy divisional commander, Superintendent Scott Thomson, made it obvious that – like DCI Heath – he did not believe her. It was clear that she was now in serious trouble, and the problem was not that her fingerprint had been identified but that she refused to accept this fact.

  Iain tried his best to reassure his daughter, but as a former police officer he was fully aware that fingerprint evidence was incontrovertible. Was she afraid to speak the truth? And if so, why? He implored her to think again and revise her story. She must be wrong. Why would she not admit it? Yet the more he tried to talk to Shirley, the more agitated she became. Soon she was accusing him of betraying her and she felt more hurt by his lack of trust in her word than anyone else’s. She knew that she had not been where the print had been found. How was it possible that her own father would not accept the truth of what she was saying?

  For the next few nights she lay awake as the accusations circled in her head. At work during the day she faced more pressure. Some of her colleagues were obviously taking pains to avoid her. Those who were still speaking to her repeatedly urged her to ‘come clean’. Why put everything at risk by telling a lie about what she had done? Leaving a fingerprint at a crime scene was a fairly common occurrence for police officers and hardly a hanging offence. There must be some reason why she had entered the house. And if there wasn’t, surely she could just invent one and get it all over with?

  But she could see many flaws in that argument. There had been a 24-hour police guard on the murder scene, with all callers being logged in and out. Even if she had been able to slip into the place unobserved, it would have been madness to touch anything, given the intense forensic activity. It was simply something that a police officer, particularly an ambitious one, would not do. And no ambitious police officer would risk a charge of perjury by failing to tell the truth when found out. Changing her story was out of the question, particularly as it would mean telling a lie.

  Nancy and Iain were more than aware of Shirley’s almost pathological hatred of lies. It had ended more than one friendship and relationship and it would do so again. It was this addiction to the truth that finally convinced them that someone was making a catastrophic mistake and they knew that person wasn’t Shirley.

  They resolved to rally round her even more strongly in order to help her through this ordeal. Along with the rest of the family, they made it clear that they believed Shirley and wanted to help her, no matter the private doubts that some members of the family still harboured given the facts of the matter. None of them, of course, had an inkling of the years of suffering that were still to come, nor that the name Shirley McKie would eventually make headlines around the world.

  On 17 February 1997 Shirley was called back to see Superintendent Thomson. It had only been six days since the initial news about the print, but much seemed to have happened in that short period of time. Shirley felt as though her life had been torn apart. She soon found out that she had every reason to be afraid. First of all, Superintendent Thomson was quick to make his position, and that of Strathclyde Police, perfectly clear. He was harsh and challenging. He wanted the matter concluded there and then by means of an admission of guilt and he refused even to consider that she might be telling the truth.

  Despite this attitude, Shirley did not give way. She had had a brainwave the day before and now believed that the explanation might lie in a mistaken procedure. She asked to return to the house with staff from the identification bureau, which was responsible for collecting evidence from the murder scene, watch them photograph the print again and then go to the SCRO to see a comparison made between the photograph and her elimination prints. This was agreed, but subsequently she was told that whilst the identification bureau was relaxed about her presence, the SCRO experts would not permit her to watch their work as they felt it would challenge their integrity.

  The next day she was taken to the house and watched as two members of the identification bureau took new photographs. The label attached to the image was signed by Shirley and immediately dispatched to the SCRO in Pitt Street in Glasgow. Highly nervous, Shirley went to her mother’s house to wait for the result, which was promised that day.

  A telephone call from DI McAllister deepened her despair. The SCRO had once again identified the print as hers. Shirley became hysterical. This once confident, outgoing and successful police detective was deteriorating before the family’s eyes into a fearful, edgy wreck. She was neither sleeping nor eating. The next day, as was now inevitable, she phoned in sick.

  Having been brought up in a so-called ‘police family’ she felt a close personal identification with the force. Now she was an outsider. Her career, until so recently the centre of her life, was being destr
oyed. All she could see ahead was uncertainty and pain. To have her colleagues turn against her overnight was inexplicable, destabilising and profoundly wounding. Anxiety, stress and depression were the likely outcomes.

  Newly divorced and living alone, unable to come to terms with what had happened and constantly terrified that the matter would never be properly resolved, Shirley needed constant reassurance and support. Yet although her family were there for her, Strathclyde Police was treating her as a non-person, and this attitude also extended to Iain. He couldn’t understand the lack of openness, nor the way every single interviewer had deemed Shirley a liar. The complete lack of compassion from officers he had known and served with really hurt – there were no phone calls, no private words or messages. Like Shirley, he too felt completely let down and rejected by the force he had served with for so long.

  Even under stress, and even whilst still believing that a mistake must lie at the root of all these problems, Shirley realised that she might soon need legal representation. She consulted the Police Federation, the trade union for police officers, and was referred to Peter Watson of Levy and McRae, the Federation’s Glasgow lawyers. He was helpful but non-committal. He recognised that her situation was unique and he agreed to monitor the matter and try to obtain further information.

  Then, unexpectedly, on a Thursday at the end of February, a smiling Inspector Karen Mcdonald from Kilmarnock arrived on Shirley’s doorstep, carrying three bunches of flowers, a bottle of wine and a box of chocolates. Shirley was delighted to see a familiar police face, and the gifts implied that her colleagues did care after all.